In the library, Rudy and Jon Kim had moved most of the furniture abutting the wall nearest to Arlington Street: Corinth One’s grandiose desk, his globe with the world a quarter pink with the British Empire, and a table supporting the model of a Spanish galleon. They had emptied the shelves on this wall of books and stacked dozens of glass plates, Clara’s record of Civil War carnage, onto the damask sofa and several chairs. They were rapping their knuckles against the walnut shelves as if starting a perverse “knock, knock” joke.
“Nothing, nothing,” Jon Kim kept saying. “Keep trying, it’s got to be someplace,” Rudy said. They were so intent that they hadn’t noticed me, until Jon Kim turned to swig the can of Dr. Pepper he’d left by the copper eagle inkwell on Corinth One’s desk.
“The last man who did that ended up dead,” I told them.
Rudy Schmitz wheeled around.
“Bryce Rossi was doing that.”
“Yes, and you were arguing with Bryce the day he was murdered. So Jonny informed me. And the docent you trained with also ended up dead.” Rudy had shorn off his ponytail and was editing the gray from his remaining hair with Grecian Formula or some other such chemical.
“Gentlemen,” Jon Kim said, “we must be civil.”
“Do you really think that monstrance is buried in this wall?” I asked.
“Bryce Rossi did.” Jon Kim set his soda directly onto the mahogany surface of the desk before catching himself and transferring it onto the green baize pad. “Bryce told Rudy—”
“Watch yourself, Jon.”
“Mark needs to know.” Rudy flushed red so that his complexion complemented the cartoon logo, the Leaning Tower of Pisa wearing earmuffs, on his Chill T-shirt. “Bryce told Rudy that he’d heard, through sources, that some people, art thieves, were planning a burglary here. A heist similar to the one at the Gardner Museum. To find the monstrance and sell it on the black market. Bryce had found some allusion to its whereabouts in some Mingo papers he’d chanced upon.”
Was Bryce referring to the papers in Grace Torrance’s house? I had found nothing relevant, but perhaps Bryce had already taken something, with or without Genevieve’s knowing.
“Bryce was a fence. The media reported that. He was probably the guy planning the breakin,” I said.
“Then why would he have alerted us to it, for God’s sake?” Rudy, clearly addled, fetched a cigarette from his pocket, recalled his whereabouts, and then tucked it away. “Mark, I wish you would get it through your…head, I care about Mingo House, its past, present, and future. Even Nadia admits that.”
“Admits?”
“She’s regained consciousness. She spent some time in rehab and is now back at her home in Brookline. She mentioned she’d like to see you, by the way.”
Jon Kim had re-mounted the small aluminum ladder they’d procured for their search and was again rapping his knuckles against the paneling.
“Why would Corinth Mingo seal this monstrance into a wall? He was a practical, no-nonsense kind of guy.”
“You’re forgetting Corinth had a wife,” Rudy told me. “Clara Whicher Mingo was a one-of-a-kind neurasthenic, as they called them back then. Forever getting the vapors, forever taking to bed. Seeing ghosts on the stairs, in the coal shed, on the Common. Perhaps she saw the ghost of King Charles the First, with his lace collar, holding his head. Who knows? Clara could have given Corinth an ultimatum: ‘Get rid of the accursed thing, or I’ll leave.’”
“Hey,” Jon Kim said.
“I think we’re done,” Rudy said.
“No, we’re not. Listen.” Jon Kim rapped his knuckles against the historic wood, which emitted a uniform sound of solidity until, on the uppermost shelf…
“That sounds hollow! It sounds like there’s a compartment behind there,” I said.
Jon Kim yanked at one particular board—“Hey, I’ve got something!”—then, jerkily, it slid aside as it was meant to, for the correct Mingo hand. Beyond was a cramped compartment where a square white something loomed in the murk.
“Good God!” Rudy said.
Jon Kim pulled it out—a cardboard box—was it from a department store? It was embossed with filigreed Victorian lettering and a design of bluebirds with flowers in their beaks.
When Jon Kim flipped aside the cover, we all saw, not silver, not a monstrance, but gold—a strange sort of wreath woven from—
“Hair,” Rudy said. “It’s a wreath made of hair.”
“That’s gross,” Jon Kim said.
“From the triplets. Aginesse, Alva, and Araminta. The sisters who died of complications from diphtheria. The Victorians wove wreathes from their loved ones’ hair. They used it in lockets and bracelets. They used it in pictures. As part of the mourning process.”
“Is there anything more?” I climbed the ladder to peer into the secret compartment and saw it was empty. “No monstrance. Not here. But why hide this?”
“The Mingoes were mad,” Rudy said. To put it mildly, I thought.
“But if there’s one compartment, there may be others,” Jon Kim said.
“See, here.” Rudy pulled a yellowed strip of newsprint from beneath the wreath and showed it to Jon Kim and me.
It read:
Daughters of Corinth Mingo Die, Great Tragedy Strikes Armaments Manufacturer
The triplet daughters of Corinth Hollis Mingo, Aginesse, Alva, and Araminta, died of fever despite the valiant efforts of doctors and family. Mrs. Clara Mingo was reported prostrate with grief, insisting that the girls’ bodies remain in their beds and preventing the undertakers from transporting them to the mortuary…
Then Rudy’s cell phone began playing its ringtone of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” “Yes? I thought this guy was supposed to be experienced. Are you asking me to come?” He clamped the phone shut. “Carnage at Flex. Our sushi chef lost the tip of his thumb while cutting up an octopus. Then he bled all over the dining area. Gotta run.”
Chapter Twenty
Jon Kim insisted we go back to Rudy’s townhouse on Beacon Hill. “After that treasure hunt, and all that’s happened, I could use a drink. I make a killer Mojito. You game?”
It was an opportunity to sound out his opinions about the new information I’d learned lately.
He hadn’t exaggerated about the cocktail. His drinks could shame those of my friend Arthur Hilliard from my old Provincetown days. Jon Kim stripped off his cranberry-red polo shirt so that he was clad in moccasins and running shorts that clung to his loins. He hadn’t bothered wearing underwear or a jockstrap. In Rudy’s back garden, the pink and white impatiens had risen gradually from their beds like so many bright soufflés.
“I’ve had a rough week, a rough summer, really. My company is facing a hostile takeover. Two other vice presidents have resigned, and, if the deal goes through, they’re moving our company to North Carolina. I mean, I’m just coming out, so the last place I want to go is the Bible Belt.” Jon Kim had brought us some bacon-and-scallop hors d’oeuvres left over from one of Rudy’s parties but was so involved with telling his own story that he neglected to share any with me. “The upside would be I’d escape Rudy’s advances.” He ate the last piece of bacon. “I mean, he’s a tiger in bed. He wears me out. My God, he’s buff! I was shocked the first time I saw him, that he could look that good and smoke so much. But in some ways he’s like a little kid, you know, got to get his way, not thinking of other people.” He placed the empty hors d’oeuvres plate by his director’s chair.
“I envy you, being settled and all. Settled psychologically, with your partner.” He kicked off his moccasins. He and Rudy both had huge bony feet. “I’m just transitioning. Between my wife and who knows what. When I was little, in Hawaii, we lived in Kaneohe, this place near the Valley of the Temples. There’s this big cemetery there, at the foot of the mountains. And this Buddhist-style temple, with a big bronze bell and a pond with carp.” He burped. “It rains all the time there, this fine sprinkling mist. If you stand still, you’ll grow moss. Everything
mildews.”
He was talking to himself as much as to me.
“I’d go to the cemetery to ruminate. To figure things out. My parents owned a hardware store, the nuts and bolts kind. They were getting divorced. My brother was off in the Marines. My sister was kind of wild, skipping school, doing ice. I was the prodigy, all A’s and all alone. Pushing away the gay thing by studying twenty-four/seven, taking college-level courses at UH. But you can’t study yourself out of clinical depression.”
The garden was beginning to whirl. The federalist lines of Rudy’s rose-red brick townhouse were warping. The Mojito was dissolving my inhibitions, and I thought of the murders: “Do you think we’re in danger? Physical danger? You or me or Rudy?”
“Not me, I’m a black belt. I became one in my teens.”
“Bryce was beaten with a hammer.”
“He had a past. He’d probably handled some hot painting or jewel. He had some sort of conduit to the criminal world. We know that he got tipped off that a burglary might be in the works.”
Jon Kim could pound down his liquor better than the late Bryce Rossi.
“Why would Rudy trust a man like Bryce?”
“Hey, I don’t know Rudy’s every thought. Except about sex.” He grinned. “Bryce taught at a local college. The people in the various auction houses told Rudy he was competent. And Bryce was cheap and we’re on a tight budget.”
“No more.” I shooed away his pitcher of Mojitos. Was I becoming my mother, drinking too much? Now Jon Kim had grown a third nipple. “What did you think of Genevieve Courson?”
“Well, she was a little wacky. One time she was wearing this moth-eaten mink stole, with the animals’ heads and glass eyes. And she had her Goth phase, with black lipstick and pins in her ears. But she was a terrific researcher. Rudy testified to that. The paper she was writing on Mingo House was first-rate, top drawer. Rudy told me.”
So Genevieve’s research interested people outside Shawmut College, other than, say, Zack Meecham. “Genevieve wanted to show me something. The evening of the trustees’ meeting. The evening I found her murdered.”
“You’re a writer and an amateur historian. She probably wanted your opinion of a paper. Maybe she had some grammatical questions.”
“Had you seen any paper she’d done?”
“Uh-uh. I’m a numbers guy.”
“But Rudy had? You’re sure of that.”
“Yup.” He would reek of rum when Rudy returned later.
“Fletcher Coombs. Did you know him?”
“In the Biblical sense?”
“In any.”
Jon Kim flung the ice cubes from the empty pitcher into the impatiens. “He sure is well-hung.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
“You measured it when he wasn’t looking?”
“No, really, I can prove it. Cut the crap and come inside.” He clasped my arm, yanked me with all of his black-belt might.
In Rudy’s living room, with the Warhol and the fish tank, Jon Kim inserted a DVD into the player and the cinema-sized screen came to X-rated life. He fast-forwarded through various scenes—of giant genitals and wrestling lips.
Then, finally, he permitted the movie to run unmolested, and there, on the screen, stood a sexy young man with red hair and a shaved chest, forcing a smaller man’s mouth toward his crotch. Could it be…? Next, a close-up panned from the top’s six-pack, past his pierced left nipple, to his Adam’s apple and, finally, lingered on his commanding, embarrassed face.
Yes, it was Fletcher Coombs.
“I’d say he’s ‘gay for pay,’” Jon Kim said. “He lets guys do him but doesn’t reciprocate. He looks about as relaxed as a guy on a job interview. Pun intended.”
“How long have you known about this?”
“Rudy bought the DVD at a shop in the South End. It was going out of business. He bought a whole slew of DVDs, including some from this local studio in Roxbury. The studio was shutting down too. Because the owner of the studio was facing morals charges. So the clerk said.” Jon Kim stopped the action.
“Let me see the package. For the DVD.” Fletcher wasn’t on the cover of the movie, Fresh Men Initiation. It was produced by Zephyrus Studios on Lower Washington Street. “Did Larry Courson make this movie?” Was my head spinning because of the rum or more? Focus, focus, I told myself. “His name isn’t mentioned in the credits.”
“It isn’t in the credits onscreen either.”
“You say Rudy knew both Fletcher and Genevieve.”
“I told you. He saw them at Flex. Oh—and he had them here, once, for a party. Not a sex party. It was a kind of docent appreciation day. Dorothea Jakes was here, and Nadia Gulbenkian. Rudy made Baltimore-style crab-cakes. Really delicious, with lots of horseradish. And mint juleps. His mother is from Virginia. FFV, so he says.
“We all got bombed. Even Dorothea, which was a little weird since she’d brought her grandson, Chris, as her ‘date.’ I played the piano, Cole Porter, badly. Genevieve kept whining that Fletcher was the world’s worst dancer. But Fletcher let Rudy take liberties, grind his leg into his crotch. That’s when Rudy said Fletcher confessed he’d done a skin flick.”
“Was Bryce Rossi there?”
“He was never a docent.”
“Why did Fletcher tell Rudy—”
“Rudy admired Fletcher’s body, and Fletcher happened to blurt out that he’d done the movie. When Rudy went outside to smoke, and Fletcher went out…to get away from Genevieve, I think.”
I was tipsy enough to ask him now: “Ever seen my act?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re a standup guy.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I took the Orange Line from Back Bay station to the appropriate stop. A few blocks away, in a neighborhood that alternated between gentrified and ominous, I located a building of pistachio-green cinderblocks that, judging by its shattered neon sign, had once functioned as a hair salon. This matched the address of Zephyrus Studios but no trace of its term in the skin trade had survived. Someone had spent extraordinary effort to cover one of its walls with the quasi-three-dimensional, cartoonists’ writing that urban gangs perpetuate on flat, unguarded surfaces.
The building was bordered on its left by a lot of cornflowers and piles of sand and on its right by an old mansard-roofed house being rehabbed. A crew of workmen was prying asbestos shingles from the side of the house. Most of the crew spoke only Spanish but they found a colleague to answer my questions. “I was wondering about the building next door.”
“Well, we’re all wondering, buddy. Are you from the neighborhood association? That fuckin’ place was supposed to be demolished back in June, but it’s still here, the same goddamn eyesore.”
“I was wondering…” How to phrase my question, actually. “Was this ever…Zephyrus Studios?”
“Zephyrus. What’s that?”
Once prompted, I realized that I knew—it was the name of the Mingo soldier killed at the battle of Antietam, the young man referred to by the cousins, Corinth and Cleanth, in the correspondence I’d read in Rockport. Was that Larry Courson’s joke about his wife’s once eminent family? “There was a movie studio, I believe.”
“Well, there was that beauty parlor. They sold wigs, too, and painted little designs on women’s fingernails. There was a porno bookstore, if that’s what you’re after. But I never knew they shot movies there. It was a place with sticky floors, if you catch my drift. The neighbors got pissed off, they started a petition, then the owner got in some kinda trouble, and bang, it was shut.”
“Was the owner from Lynn?”
“How should I know? The guy who owns this house here is in Europe. In It-ly for the summer. He might know. But he won’t be back till mid-September.”
I struck up a conversation with various people I encountered, but no one could enlighten me as to the particulars about Zephyrus Studios, let alone Larry Courson’s connection to Fresh Men Initiation, if one existed. We were not ready for
our close up, that was for sure.
Chapter Twenty-two
Nadia Gulbenkian lived in Brookline, in a cedar-shingled house, all gables and wisteria. I’d phoned ahead and been granted permission to visit her for precisely half an hour. Released from rehab the previous weekend, Nadia tired easily. But she remained the most informed, passionate, and intelligent of the Mingo House trustees.
She was attended by Henri, her nephew from Lyon who was studying at Harvard Business School. He grimaced at my box of Godiva chocolates. “You aren’t aware she is diabetic. Obviously.” He confiscated them, perhaps for himself. He’d thrive in corporate life, I decided.
Nadia was out back, reclining on a redwood chaise lounge, wearing a raincoat, of all things (it was a little damp), under a pergola woven through with more wisteria. She attempted to get up but merely squirmed in frustration. “See? I’m good for nothing. Nothing at all.” But she’d retained her massive faux-alligator bag, and, from it, pulled out her lipstick, which she touched to her lips without consulting a mirror. Then, she unwrapped several Rolos from their tube of gilt foil, and, devouring them, said, “Mark, I just want to apologize for collapsing at your performance. I’m sure you were absolutely hilarious.”
She said this without a vestige of humor or irony.
“I know there was something funny you said, and I wished I’d written it down. But then I just blacked out.”
“No one slipped you anything?”
“Heavens, no!”
“Was Jon Kim there? In the audience that night?”
“Oh, no! It was a very seedy crowd.”
“Everyone is so glad you’re better.”
“Sometime, when I’m back to normal, you must stop by and do your whole routine. Just for me.”
“I’d love to.”
She was sipping a can of nutrition supplement. “I’m supposed to build myself up. So they tell me. But this stuff tastes like chalk.”
I just asked her outright: “Nadia, what happened to you?”
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